This proposal is directed to probing the geographical experience (defined as "the individual's involvement within the spaces and places of his life") of the older person. Building on insights from a two year participant observation study of a small number of inner city elderly, the proposal seeks funding for a thirty-three month panel study of a dozen elderly long term residents of an Appalachian community which has experienced economic decline and population outmigration. The objective is to explore the manner in which this population experiences the environmental setting. Specifically, the intention is to develop measures of four modalities of geographical experience identified in the preliminary research--action, orientation, feeling, and fantasy--and to explore the interrelationships among these dimensions as they express the older person's adjustment to, and means of coping with environmental change. The study will facilitate a deeper understanding of the meshing of time and space in the older individual's experiencing of the contemporary environment, and will provide an important foundation for developing grounded theory in this domain. The approach will be ethnographic and inductive. Research methods will focus initially on: developing intimate understanding of the environmental context; multiple minimally structured tape recorded interviews; and the recording of personal environmental histories. Subsequently, structured interviews, time/space diaries, and "mental mapping" exercises will be developed in accordance with the capabilities of the participants. Analysis of the data will include content analysis, and the development of descriptive and cartographic profiles to represent the individual's involvement within the environmental setting. The study will be a contribution not only to much needed basic research on the way older people experience space and cope with in situ environmental change, but also will facilitate improved understanding of stresses of environmental change resulting from relocation to new housing or to institutional settings.